In an autonomous traveling system in a vehicle and a mining dump truck, traveling control of the vehicle is performed so that the vehicle can autonomously travel based on vehicle position information from a positioning device such as a GPS mounted on these autonomous traveling vehicle.
In a case of causing the vehicle to perform autonomous traveling, it is necessary to create an environmental map having route information, a travelable area and obstacle information of the environment. As the method, for example, there is a method of measuring the environment and creating the environmental map for the autonomous traveling vehicle by using a manned measuring vehicle equipped with a GPS, an inertial sensor, a camera, and LIDAR, and traveling a course on which the autonomous traveling vehicle travels in advance. In addition, another method is to measure the environment with an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) equipped with a GPS, an inertial sensor, a camera, a laser distance measuring sensor (light detection and ranging: LIDAR), and the like, and to create a map based on the information.
However, in the case of the former method, there is a possibility that the environment cannot be sufficiently measured due to measurement performance of the measuring vehicle and occlusion caused by an environmental obstacle and the like. For example, as a technique for solving the problem, PTL 1 discloses “a terrain information acquisition device that includes an area specifying unit which specifies a completed area where a three-dimensional map is created and an uncompleted area where a three-dimensional map is not created of the predetermined area with reference to a three-dimensional map created in advance for a portion of the terrain in a predetermined area, a terrain gradient estimation unit which estimates a terrain gradient in the uncompleted area based on the three dimensional map, and a terrain data acquisition unit which acquires terrain data in the uncompleted area while optimizing the terrain data acquisition condition based on the uncompleted area and the terrain gradient estimated in the uncompleted area”.